Pumpkin Love

October 19, 2012

Tis the season...for pumpkin! My admiration for pumpkin definitely is a recent development because my childhood had very few encounters with pumpkin besides roasted seeds and pumpkin pie. Neither of which were pleasant to my young palate. 

Now decades later, I try to buy cans of Libby's Pumpkin Puree every fall to try out new recipes. My past favorite has been this mini cake recipe that I used to make some delicious cupcakes. 

This year, my first can of pumpkin stretched into two different recipes. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Bars:
I love a good cookie bar. When I found this recipe, I expected a cookie bar; however, it ended up being more fluffy and cake-like. The name is definitely misleading. Anyway, the name aside, these "bars" are not too spicy, not too sweet and pretty tasty. This recipe might be a keeper. 

Pumpkin Snickerdoodles: 
I also love a good snickerdoodle cookie. It's probably because I prefer soft, pillowy cookies over crunchy, thin ones. Add some pumpkin and poof, it's the perfect fall cookie. I got this recipe from one of my favorite blogs, Annie's Eats. 

While I've used my new oven many times in the past month, these two pumpkin baking adventures were my only times baking with it. The pumpkin bars baked much faster than the time recommended in the recipe. I kind of forgot about that and found myself with one batch of burnt cookie bottoms. 
sad cookie
Anyway once I shortened the baking time, I got good batches of perfectly baked cookies. These are pretty mild on the spice level and in the pumpkin factor. After reading comments for the recipe, people recommend adding more pumpkin puree. I'll put these in the maybe category for repeat baking. 

On a side note: Red leaved-trees somehow don't exist on the block I live. I saw plenty while I went running yesterday and was sad I didn't have my camera handy because some of them looked like glowing flames. (Pretty nifty, unlike the very yellowish-green trees below).

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